Global warming is a hoax. Is that a surprise?

I read Sarah Palin’s commentary on Facebook today calling for Mr. Obama to boycott the climate conference in Copenhagen. As much as I admire Mrs. Palin, I have to disagree with one thing; as I posted on her page, Obama won’t investigate his ‘climate’ experts because they are part of the shadow government he wants to implement, that’s why. He can’t investigate people he’s counting on to push the environmentalist agenda bent on giving away our sovereignty to our enemies. Every day the federal government makes some stupid claim that human-made pollution is destroying the world and is taking steps to take over our ability to make choices and make our great nation the culprit of the world’s ills. There is no point in asking Obama to chastise the same people he counts on to help him accomplish his hope and change. He also has a strong backing in the Congress.

Global warming pseudo science has been the big lie to keep people from asking questions. Now that it’s out in the open idiots like Barbara Boxer say it’s a crime to reveal the emails because they were stolen. Really? How about the crime of usurping power from the American people? What about justice? Now truth and justice are considered crimes by the liberals and it makes sense. They are uncomfortable with the truth and they hang on to their make-believe world until the rest of us believe it.

Obama said clearly for two years of sitting on the senate bench voting present he wanted to ‘transform’ America and this message was delivered to the masses loud and clear during the campaign. That was not some cryptic speech, it was in plain English. Those of us who understood it then are praying now asking why this man was elected to office. This is indeed a transformation I want no part of and many Americans agree.

This tyranny must be stopped. We must question everything from now on even at great risk to our wellbeing because of a lie. Global warming…I was in Baghdad when it snowed…boy was that a typical global warming experience!

And as for science, the next time a relative gets sick with some rare disease say goodbye to conventional wisdom, seek other answers and challenge all research. There is no information we can trust now. The next time ladies, you go to the gynecologist for a check remember someone has declared breast exams and mammograms necessary only for women within a certain age group and that’s not you guess what? Good luck. Obama’s Czar Cass Sunstein and Rahm Emanuel’s brother Ezekiel Rahm, a ‘bioethicist’ and Obama’s choice for ‘health’ Czar have that very concept in mind for you. This is the guy who thinks that Eugenics – which by the way is NOT a rock band – is the most ethical way of dealing with life and death of humans. Rahm believes people who don’t fit a certain criteria, should not receive health care. But that’s just a glib description of the guy. You can read what he thinks here, a paper entitled Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions you tell me…these people think that you and me are bad for the environment. These are the same people who vilified the medical profession accusing doctors of cutting off limbs and doing unnecessary surgery to make a buck are out to get you and their scheme is finally made public but they’re fighting hard to do damage control.

Oh, but don’t let me limit your answers to that; how about all the money dumped into worthless and frivolous research like the NIH (National Institutes of Health) on Chinese hookers? It’s obvious that hookers in China need instruction on how not to drink too much on the job. In the meantime people die from disease all over the world.  It’s not looking good for science right now. Maybe we can study the impact the Chinese hookers could have if we send them to the moon. Even NASA has come under scrutiny. So much for stargazing.

For so long I defended the need to support even pure research because many good discoveries came from both design or from secondary results; many an accident in the lab has become an invention or treatment for disease to help humanity; always a welcomed outcome. Not anymore. Science has become yet another tool to manipulate our freedom to think for ourselves and those scientists who support this ideal are guilty of crimes against humanity. The reputation and relevance of scientific work, for those who actually do it to help humanity, has been tarnished and personal and professional greed has driven ’scientists’ to support a hoax because their objective is to see who gets to be lauded as the best of whatever in academia. I for one don’t care. And for those scientists who had the courage to speak out but where drowned out by the mobsters I feel for you; you are the minority and losing the battle. The profession has lost credibility.

And so has its main spokesman – well, I never thought he had credibility – but Al Gore just cancelled his grip-and-grin appearance 

 in Copenhagen. That’s too bad because he’s probably afraid he’ll be confronted by people like Irish reporter Phelim McAleer as he questioned the validity of Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth and may have to actually answer why he thinks polar bears are so endangered when clearly it’s humanity these commies are trying to destroy. Not only that, Gore continues to fill his pockets with money from ventures that go against his supposed environmental philosophy but doesn’t want you or me to grow prosperous.

So you know what? I’ve had it with this bad science. When someone tells me I eat too much of anything or that I create too much trash I’m going to do the exact opposite. That’s right. You know what I’m having for breakfast this morning?

Pork rinds, grape juice and bread and as soon as I stop typing this I’m going to get me the biggest cup of coffee – regular, no decaf – I can find and chug the whole thing. Why? Because I want to and this is my life and having choices is truly happiness. This is called freedom and it tastes good! Take that, worshipers of world dominance. The gig is up.

More on Obama’s climate experts and other links:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117804

Media being banned from the conference

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117858

Earth warming

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117823

Hackers vs climate hoax

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/70249-boxer-hacked-climategate-emails-may-face-criminal-probe

I’m in the market in a modest way and so I like to check google finance now and then (the fact that I check google finance is surely an indicator of my amateurishness right?). I’m convinced that the message boards under various stocks are a threat to democracy.

What do I mean? I mean that the google message boards are what Cass Sunstein describes as echo chambers, in which the participants can bounce absurd opinions off other similarly uninformed people to heighten their own ignorance and resistance to further argumentation.* This sort of deliberative solipsism is very dangerous to democracies, which rely, at least partially, on the erstwhile persuasion of various groups concerning controversial social decisions. This is not idle speculation or unmotivated alarmism. A substantial body of psychological and political science literature notes that people, when put into a group of like minded people, often emerge from discussion with a more firm belief in their own views.

But such isolation is not limited to lunatics on google finance boards, but infects our entire FOX/CNN media culture. You see, I think our culture, with its emphasis on a narrow kind of satisfaction or happiness encourages confusing actions with beliefs. Actions aim at the good, which is pleasure or happiness, but beliefs are supposed to aim at the truth. We watch our favorite media outlet because their opinions, which match ours, are soothing. News thought of in this way is a type of entertainment or sedative. This is wrong. If beliefs are about truth, then we should not seek to derive satisfaction from their unchallenged status. Rather, our beliefs should be made to collide with others so that we can become more justified in our beliefs and perhaps even embrace more truths in the long run.

* One might worry that I’m being too much of an intellectual elitist, and that people in these message boards, while not being scholars, are genuinely exchanging ideas. I provide these small snippets to prove that this is not so. I’ve only provided two, since they’re pretty offensive.

Obama sure could have used a dad growing up.
No one ever taught him how to be a man.
Bush’s dad was a WWII vet and taught him not to bitch
like a chick and blame everyone else for your problems.
Bush had to deal with the aftermath of a president that
chose to ignore the growing terror threat. I cannot recall
him ever blaming his predecessor  for any of his inherited
problems. I cannot recall a time when Obama did not.

and

Also he’s [Obama] an indecisive, limp wristed sissy that succumbed to the advances of a homo while on drugs.
I don’t trust any man that rolls gutter balls consistently.
It’s a matter of testosterone.

And so on.

Update… Google has fixed it.

It appears that Google has blocked ‘climategate’ or any variation of the phrase from its auto-suggest feature (not from its search engine). The same is true for Youtube and all other google-owned sites I have queried.

It’s the first auto-suggest phrase on Yahoo, Bing, Dogpile, WebCrawler, Ask.com, and any other search engine that is not associated with Google.

As I was researching for my English paper on the Progressive Movement, I came across Franklin Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union address. I was deeply appalled that any president, especially one that is often portrayed as one of the greatest ever, would propose something that’s so against the America’s foundation. Below I will copy the address and highlight his new “rights:”

“It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.”

These are so blatantly radical, unconstitutional, and socialist. It gets a whole lot worse. According to an article on www.forbes.com, Cass Sunstein (Head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) is a strong supporter of these rights. Sunstein wrote a book, published in 2004 titled, The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever. If you believe in the constitution, the founding of this nation, and capitalism than you should be nervous that he has such a high position. These “rights” would astronomically grow the size of government and result in excessive taxation to fund all the programs.

It seems clear that’s exactly what progressives want, the growth of government, the death of capitalism and the rise of socialism. “Obama calls himself a progressive, as does Hillary Clinton” (http://www.newsweek.com/id/189122). Al Gore also considers himself a progressive, you know the guy who’s not a scientist and cares so deeply about the environment/global cooling, err I mean warming, and thinks he knows global warming inside and out.  Now, either these liberals, progressives, which ever you prefer to call them are either unaware at the extremely radicalism of their titles or they intend completely to uproot America and “Fundamentally transform” America.

SIDE NOTE: A couple scientists got their emails hacked and proves that global warming figures have been distorted. Shocking huh? http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html

Cass Sunstein: Progressive Idiot

The battle to censor anyone who disagrees with Obama continues. First it was Anita “Mao” Dunn attacking Fox News because they actually report the news that Obama doesn’t want people to hear. In particular ACORN, SEIU and green jobs commie, Van Jones. Obama and “Mao” Dunn did not want the alphabet-media to take a page from Fox News and actually start investigating the words Obama was saying or his associations with these corrupt communist/socialists he has appointed to his administration.

 Now that Anita “Mao” Dunn is gone, Obama’s regulations czar is taking up the same talking points. This Progressive czar believes that websites should be required to remove “false rumors” he deems to be untrue and he wants to alter libel laws so it would be easier to sue for spreading such “rumors.”

WND reports:

In his recently released book, “On Rumors,” Sunstein specifically cited as a primary example of “absurd” and “hateful” remarks, reports by “right-wing websites” alleging an association between President Obama and Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers.

He also singled out radio talker Sean Hannity for “attacking” Obama regarding the president’s “alleged associations.”

In the era of the Internet , it has become easy to spread false or misleading rumors about almost anyone,” Sunstein writes.

 ”Some right-wing websites liked to make absurd and hateful remarks about the alleged relationship between Barack Obama and the former radical Bill Ayers; one of the websites’ goals was undoubtedly to attract more viewers,” he writes.

Sunstein continues: “On the Internet as well as on talk radio, altruistic propagators are easy to find; they play an especially large role in the political domain. When Sean Hannity, the television talk show host, attacked Barack Obama because of his alleged associations, one of his goals might have been to promote values and causes that he cherishes.”

We have progressive with positions inside Obama’s administration that believe in censorship and have the power to change the rules to fit their socialist agendas. Cass Sunstein is one and FCC Diversity Czar, Mark Lloyd is another. Both of these progressives have admitted their love for socialism and Marxism.

Cass Sunstein also has some bat-shit crazy beliefs like that trees can sue people. He also wants to ban hunting and repeal the 2nd amendment. The sad fact is that this libtard made it through congressional confirmation, despite his radical beliefs. However, Obama has shown his desire to be surrounded by radicals.

I haven’t read Cass R. Sunstein’s new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” so I’m withholding judgment. But I want to read it, soon. Because if this is true, Obama has gone a czar too far and Sunstein never should have been confirmed. As Marla Singer writes, “‘Prove the content is not libelous’ is rather a troublesome contention.” To say the least.

(I confess I hadn’t heard that he had been confirmed. Apparently it happened last month while everyone was running around talking about health or something.)

Let me begin by saying that the current versions of ObamaCare don’t have a single death panel.

It’s more like 111 separate death panels.

Some of the names  and acronyms of the dozens and dozens of bureaucracies are undoubtedly different under the new iteration of socialized medicine, but here’s a snapshot of your new health care system if Democrats get their way:

The Senate version is 2,075 pages of fun, I hear.  Nobody understands it.  And nobody is going to end up getting a chance to read it by the time it gets voted on.

If you thought that there was going to be any kind of transparency or accountability – or even honesty – from the Obama administration – you need to stop smoking your crack pipe.

This latest event in the march toward socialized medicine reminds me of the case of Barbara Wagner.  In Oregon, which has “universal coverage” through the state, she was abandoned to die by a system that would not pay for her cancer treatment, but offered to pay for her euthanasia.

Only this time, the government wants to deny treatment on the other side of the cancer diagnosis.

IBD Editorials

Rationing’s First Step

Health Care: A government task force has decided that women need fewer mammograms and later in life. Shouldn’t that be between patient and physician? We have seen the future of health care, and it doesn’t work.

We have warned repeatedly that the net results of health care bills before Congress will be higher demand, fewer doctors, more cost control, all leading to rationing.  New recommendations issued by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) regarding breast cancer and the necessity for early and frequent mammograms do not convince us otherwise.

Just six months ago, the panel, which works under the Health and Human Services Department as a “best practices” study group, was shouting its concern about a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study showing a 1% drop in the number of women regularly undergoing such screening and prevention.

The task force was saying that women older than 40 should get a mammogram every one to two years. It found that frequent screening lowered death rates from breast cancer mostly for women ages 50 to 69. But that was then, and this is now.

“We’re not saying women shouldn’t get screened. Screening does save lives,” Diana Petiti, task force vice chairman, said of the recommendations published Tuesday in Annals of Internal Medicine. “But we are recommending against routine screening.”

Now the panel recommends that women in their 40s stop having routine annual mammograms and that older women should cut back to every two years. The concern allegedly is that too frequent testing can result in increased anxiety, false positives, unneeded follow-up tests and possibly disfiguring biopsies.  Preventing breast cancer and saving lives almost get lost in the new analysis.

“I have a particular concern in this case about who was involved in this task force,” says Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., who was a heart surgeon in private life. “There are no surgeons or oncologists who deal directly with breast cancer or even radiologists. … I’ve seen far too many young women develop late-stage breast cancer because they didn’t have adequate screening.”

Little, if anything, has happened medically in the last six months to cause such a shift. A lot, however, has happened politically as a health care overhaul has limped forward on life support. The Congressional Budget Office has been busy pricing these various bills, a process that includes screening and prevention.

As we have warned, the growing emphasis seems to be on cost containment rather than quality of care. About 39 million women undergo mammograms each year in America, costing the health care system more than $5 billion.

“The American Cancer Society continues to recommend annual screening using mammography and clinical breast examination for all women beginning at age 40,” says Otis Brawley, its chief medical officer. “Our experts make this recommendation having reviewed virtually all the same data reviewed by the USPSTF, but also additional data that the USPSTF did not consider.”

Daniel Kopans, a radiology professor at Harvard Medical School, says: “Tens of thousands of lives are being saved by mammography screening, and those idiots want to do away with it. It’s crazy — unethical, really.”

This, sadly, appears to be the future of medicine under government-run health care. Aside from taxes on insurers, providers and device manufacturers, we’ll be up to our eyeballs in cost-effectiveness boards that will decide who gets what tests and treatments, when and if. These are only recommendations for now, but they are the shape of things to come.

An IBD/TIPP poll found that 45% of medical doctors would consider retiring if the Congressional health care “reform” passes.  Given the fact that an increasing shortage of doctors is already one of the chief burdens in providing health care, this exodus would amount to a catastrophe that our health system would never recover from.

In Canada, the chronic doctor shortage has been bad enough that patients literally have to sign up for a lottery in order to have a chance to “win” a primary care physician.  But now we are learning that overwhelmed Canadian doctors are using a lottery of their own to dump patients.

Why on earth would anyone want this for America?

The Obama administration is preparing the health delivery system to implement the philosophy of Obama advisers such as Robert Reich, Ezekiel Emanuel, and Cass Sunstein, which can be easily summarized with the quote:

“It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

Robert Reich’s words in context only make the hateful idea sound even more hateful:

And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

Then there are the words of Obama’s Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, who wrote:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

And Rahm Emanuel’s brother Ezekiel, whom Obama appointed as his OMB health policy adviser in addition to selecting him to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research wrote:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.”  Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care.  Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

And Obama himself told a woman who wanted to keep her aging mother alive:

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

YOU take the painkiller rather than have that lifesaving surgery, Barry Hussein.  And why don’t you insist that Michelle and your two daughters take the pill rather than have that lifesaving surgery, too?  Just to be like all the “little people” out there.

But of course that’s not going to happen.  Rather, Democrats have now exempted themselves from 11 separate amendments that would have required them to have the same ObamaCare that they want to force everyone else to have.

You can understand why they would do so, given the promises that the system will be worse than terrible, and due to the fact that even a complete idiot who looks around and sees how horribly the administration has managed the H1N1 vaccine situation can recognize that taking on 1/6th of the economy would be beyond catastrophic.  I mean, heck, if I were a Democrat, I’d be sure to exempt myself from this monstrosity too, lest MY family members fall under the coming steamroller.

This “recommendation” of reducing mammographies isn’t mandatory now, but that’s because the government hasn’t usurped the health care system yet.  You just wait a decade from now, when the government runs everything, and soaring deficits force them to start cutting costs.

The recent surge in gun sales is a sign of a collective awareness that American voters have made a huge mistake.  It has become obvious that nobody within Obama’s circle of czars, judges, friends, and advisers have any intention of preserving the 2nd amendment.  Cass Sunstein has made it obvious that he opposes your right to bear arms, which was established to provide protection against a tyrannical government.  To me, the existence of the 2nd amendment implies the genius of our founding fathers.  They understood that leaders like Obama and their appointees would eventually surface, and work to attack the basic freedoms of Americans.  They wanted to assure that American citizens could arm themselves in the fight to regain their rights.

I’m aware that there is a positive correlation between gun sales and the unemployment rate.  I’m also aware of collective behavior.  Humans have proven repeatedly throughout history, that a population will comply with tyrannical leaders despite knowing that it has the power to overthrow them.  Read more about it:

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article6917828.ece

Di Republic.com di Cass Sunstein (testo tra quelli a scelta nel programma di Giornalismo politico 2009/10) è disponibile anche la versione aggiornata, nella quale si ragiona su quanto blog e reti sociali cambiano lo scenario di rischio per la democrazia prospettato nella prima edizione del libro.

Tutti coloro che scegliessero la nuova release farebbero buona cosa.

‘Nudging’ is the buzzword of the year among reformers and policy wonks. A term popularized by Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, a ‘nudge’ is a soft push in the right direction by structuring a choice to make the chooser more likely to opt for the desired outcome. Why go around prohibiting negative behaviors when you can more easily discourage them by giving the individual more information? It’s an elegant solution to the problem of how to tackle large societal problems without infringing on personal freedom of choice.

But nudging has its limitations, perhaps more than its proponents at first realized. Today I look at a few of them and predict that while nudging is likely to become more common in public policy than it is today, its role will be more limited than originally thought. Nudging isn’t a panacea, it’s just one more tool in the public policy toolkit.

Back in mid-2008, Harvard professor Cass Sunstein published his millionth book (seriously, this guy publishes a book more often than college students wash their sheets). Nudge was a look at how we can affect people’s choices not by telling them what to do but instead by controlling what Sunstein calls the ‘choice architecture’. Want to encourage people to eat better? Don’t go around suing McDonald’s and regulating ingredients — just pass a law making McDonald’s and all other restaurants label their menus with calories and other nutritional information. Et voila. Your average consumer now knows just how unhealthy a Big Mac is compared to a salad. And the theory goes that with that knowledge, the consumer will make better choices. The goal of healthier eating has been accomplished, with the low-cost and freedom-enhancing tool of menu labeling. Nudge successful.

Nudge proponents say that it works because it makes a person’s ‘opportunity cost’ clearer. Suddenly the choice isn’t just “Do you want fries with that?” but rather “Do you want to add 300 calories to your meal for an extra $0.25, or would you rather use that money to add blue cheese to your garden salad for an extra 50 calories?”. Nudging harnesses the economist’s insight that no individual choice is made in a vacuum, but is instead weighed against all other possible choices. By making those other missed opportunities explicit, nudgers hope to discourage negative choices and highlight positive ones.

When you first start thinking about the power of nudging, the sky seems like the limit. Sunstein talks about cafeteria lines and the power of putting salad and fruit in front of burgers. He points out that retirement saving skyrocket when employees are given the chance to sign up for a 401(K) savings plan that automatically increases the savings rate when they get a raise.

Behavioral economists could list a million more examples of how structuring a choice changes the outcome. We don’t come into a choice knowing all our options and carefully weighing the pros and cons and then making an optimal choice given our goals. Instead, we seem to wander through life and choose things based on irrational factors. As Sunstein points out, we spend more time thinking about which movie to watch than about which 401(K) savings plan to sign up for. Reformers and do-gooders can help people make good choices just by structuring those choices to give people a slight nudge in the right direction.

Little wonder, then, that nudging has caught on in a big way. It seems like a new nudge suggestion comes along every week. The newest nudge comes from Mike Konczal at The Atlantic, who suggests that one way to reduce the federal budget and specifically military spending is to make it a line-item on federal tax withholding statements. If people see “Iraq and Afghan war withholding: $100″ along with “social security withholding: $50″, then maybe they’d pressure their congressperson to do something about runaway spending.

It’s a good idea, but immediately raises the question: what other federal spending should be itemized on your paycheck? Maybe we could encourage Congress to spend more on foreign aid if people saw “foreign aid: $1.05″ next to “oil company tax breaks: $35″ on their monthly pay checks. But what about stimulus money? Cash for Clunkers? Highway funds? National Institutes of Health funding? Overhead at the Office of Management and Budget?

You can see where I’m going with this. The problem is that there are just too many line items in the federal budget. Maybe it’s effective to have a few line items highlighting some major federal spending, but once I have to stare at a list a mile long, I’m no longer thinking, “Hmm, we could shift some of that spending away from home buyer credits and towards federal needle exchange programs.” Instead, I’m thinking, “My God I have no idea what any of this is about. I wonder what’s on NBC tonight.”

Just like we use insights from behavior economics to make a choice architecture that will nudge people towards eating more salad, we should use some insights from behavior economics – like choice overload theory – to realize that there are severe limits to how we can nudge people. Too little information and we make bad choices because we don’t know the alternatives. Too much information and we make bad choices because we know too much to think clearly about what to do. There is a whole staff of professionals at OMB dedicated to analyzing trade-offs in the federal budget. Those are the kind of people who are equipped to really look into how my withholding is spent. I’m not. It’s just too much to handle.

So nudging can’t just be about providing the information someone needs to make the right choice. In a world as complicated as ours, the alternatives are so numerous that they are literally meaningless to the average person like you and me. It really takes a specialist to benefit from that level of detail.

One of the big selling points of nudging was that it preserves freedom of choice. People can and would still get the Big Mac – they’d just be more likely to sometimes eat salad, too. It’s up to them.

I still believe in the power of nudging in small, micro-level decisions like fast food menu labeling and employee savings plans. When the alternatives are few, it makes sense to bring them to the chooser’s attention. It could even work for large, generic macro-decisions: going to college versus starting a trade after high school is a big macro decision, but it can be structured with very specific and limited information about lifetime earning potential and job security. Nudging works in each situation because the choice can be structured with a limited set of information for the chooser.

The challenge for nudging comes for the issues in between. Too big to have a limited set of alternatives, but too small to be generalized objectively into a few big options. These are the tough cases where the nudge is going to depend on a big intervention by the nudger, deciding which information to display and which to keep hidden. The beauty of nudging was that the nudge was a non-controversial way to implement controversial social changes. Who could argue over giving people more information? That’s probably true for big nudges and little nudges. But for the in-between nudges, suddenly the nudge isn’t just a slight, dispassionate push in the right direction. Now it’s a carefully rigged scheme, with controversial choices of what information to leave in and what to take out. Mid-size nudging itself is a controversial act, and thus nudging is unlikely to be the preferred compromise for implementing policies.

A final problem with nudging is that we humans adapt to adverse changes in our environment. What if we become inured to nudging? What if it just stops working, because we develop resistance to it like a germ to antibiotics? There is reason to worry about this. New York City implemented menu labeling in 2008, and studies suggest that most people didn’t even notice the calorie counts on the menus, and those that did notice somehow ended up eating even more than before. Is this an example of a poorly-designed nudge? Or an indication that nudging might not even be very effective at changing basic behaviors after people get used to the nudge?

Either way, none of this is to detract from the good work that nudging has done to date. I’m all for more nudges. But nudgers need to be aware that nudges are more likely to be effective in very big and in very small decisions. But when the options are too numerous, designing the nudge itself becomes a topic of controversy and nudging itself is likely to become less-used and less-effective. Just another thing to file under the “good idea, but it’s no panacea” heading.

TownHall.com reports on the appointment by President Obama of Chai R. Feldblum as commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

We thought our nation had settled the polygamy issue a century and a half ago, but this nomination makes it a 21st century controversy. Obama’s nominee for the EEOC, a lesbian law-school professor named Chai R. Feldblum, signed a 2006 manifesto endorsing polygamous households (i.e., “in which there is more than one conjugal partner”).

This document, titled “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships,” argues that traditional marriage “should not be legally and economically privileged above all others.” The American people obviously think otherwise, and current laws reflect our wishes.

The article goes on to mention that Obama’s regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, wrote a book in 2008 called “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness,” in which he urged that “the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government.”

Sunstein argues that traditional marriage discriminates against single people by imposing “serious economic and material disadvantages.” He asks, “Why not leave people’s relationships to their own choices, subject to the judgments of private organizations, religious and otherwise?”

We like Mr. Sunstein very much around here. Who can forget that wonderfully informative hour-long video of his on the 2nd Amendment. After that, I tend to like anything he says.

What’s your opinion? Is the Obama administration truly leaning towards supporting polygamy and other alternative lifestyles? Would that be good or bad for the country? Do you think such a leaning on the part of the government would increase the terrible divisiveness that has marked the last few years in American history?

What’s your opinion? Please leave a comment.

So I just started reading Nudge, by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, and I must say that the book does a remarkable job at articulating how the behaviors behind our everyday choices can be manipulated through understanding the mind traps that we commonly fall into.  The initial mind trap that made me take a step back and think, was the idea of how the “default” option is almost always the most popular choice in every multiple choice (but mandatory) selection process.  This is because individuals are either too unmotivated to choose something more complex, forget about having to choose, or prefer to stick with the status quo.

Whoever is in charge of choosing the ever-so-powerful default option should be closely watched, as this individual has the power to skew each choosers individuals lives by making the default option cater to their individual benefit.   What default options do you give others in your life?

Den som hävdar att USAs president Barack Obama är socialist möts ofta med skepsis, detta trots att han har ett talande förflutet som samhällsorganisatör med en uttalat socialistisk agenda och har varit mdlem medlem i socialistiska organisationer. Därtill kommer att han umgåtts på vänskaplig fot med socialister och kommunister såsom William “Bill” Ayers, en professor som en gång i tiden var ledande medlem i den amerikanska terroristgrupperingen Weatherman.

Det finns heller ingenting som tyder på att Obama skulle ha övergivit sitt vänstervridna förflutna. Om man exempelvis tar sig en titt på de individer Obamas administration utsett till sina inofficiella “tsarer” (czars), det vill säga ansvariga för viktiga politikområden i en rad frågor, möts man av en rätt skrämmande samling mer eller mindre bisarra vänsteraktivister med stundom parodiskt politiskt korrekta målsättningar. Min slutsats blir att det är med benägen hjälp av dessa män och kvinnor Barack Obama vill bygga socialismen i USA.

Här följer en förteckning med kommentater över Obamas “tsarer”:

Richard Holbrooke

Afghanistan and Pakistan Czar

Richard Holbrooke.

Vänsterman och förespråkare för hårdare vapenlagar i USA. Holbrooke är abortanhängare och vill legalisera droger. Ambassadör i Tyskland 1993-94, president Bill Clintons sändebud i Kosovo 1995. Var 1999-2001 USAs ambassadör i FN. Hade en ledande post i Hillary Clintons valkampanj 2008.

Ed Montgomery

Auto Recovery Czar

Ed Montgomery.

Svart radikal som gjort sig känd för sitt motstånd mot näringslivet. Är för positiv särbehandling av afroamerikaner. Har ett förflutet som dean i University of Maryland Business School, där han lärde ut att amerikanska företag har orsakat världens fattigdom. Medlem i styrelsen i den kontroversiella organisationen ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). ACORN, som driver sociala rättvisefrågor, har gjort sig känt för en rad interna oegentligheter av typ förskingring, fusk med väljarregistrering samt smutsiga inbördes maktstrider. Montgomery har ett förflutet som medlem i den kommunistiska DuBois Club.

Jeffrey Crowley

AIDS Czar

Jeffrey Crowley.

Homosexuell och gayaktivist. Förespråkar “äktenskap” för homosexuella och vill att gruppen bögar och lesbiska skall tilldelas särskild status med rätt till fri sjukvård.

Alan Bersin

Border Czar

Alan Bersin.

Tidigare misslyckad skolinspektör i San Diego. Bersin är en vänsterradikal vän till Hillary Clinton. Han tjänade tidigare som Border Czar under Clintons justitieminister Janet Reno och bidrog starkt till att illegala invandrare kunde ta sig in i USA.

David J. Hayes

California Water Czar

David J. Hayes.

Senior Fellow vid den radikala miljögruppen Progress Policy. Hayes har ingen tidigare erfarenhet av handhavande av vattentillgångar.

Ron Bloom

Car Czar

Ron Bloom.

Har ett förflutet som anställd vid det tyska bilföretaget Auto Union. Har en fientlig inställning till såväl näringslivet som kärnkraften. Bloom sägs ha kämpat hårt för att få amerikanska biltillverkare att komma till korta i den internationella konkurrensen. Är styrelsemedlem i Chrysler, som nu ägs av Auto Union. En berättigad fråga är på vad sätt Bloom var inblandad i detta ägarbyte.

Dennis Ross

Central Region Czar

Dennis Ross.

Har övertygelsen att det är den amerikanska utrikespolitiken som förorsakat krigen i Mellanöstern. Har blivit känd som en Obama-apologet inför världen. Ross är emot vapen och för aborter.

Lynn Rosenthal

Domestic Violence Czar

Lynn Rosenthal.

Har en bakgrund som director för the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). Rosenthal har bland annat gjort sig känd för att förespråka manlig kastrering.

Gil Kerlikowske

Drug Czar

Gil Kerlikowske.

Kerlikowske är en ivrig lobbyist för varje typ av restriktiv vapenlag i USA. Han har varit polischef i liberala Seattle och anser att ingen amerikan skulle ha rätt att äga ett eldvapen. Stödjer legalisering av droger.

Carol Brower

Energy and Environmental Czar

Carol Brower.

Är en politiskt radikal före detta chef för EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) som blivit bekant för näringslivsfientlig aktivism. Socialist med bakgrund i Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), som pläderar för “global governance”. Bower menar att rika länder måste dra ner på sina ekonomier i syfte att komma till rätta med den globala uppvärmningen.

Joshua DuBois

Faith – Based Czar

Joshua DuBois.

Radikal aktivist för negerrättigheter. DuBois har en akademisk grad i ämnet Black Nationalism och har fört fram tanken på en separat svart nation inom Förenta staterna. Har lobbat för lagar mot vapenägarskap.

Cameron Davis

Great Lakes Czar

Cameron Davis.

Radikal från Obamas hemstad Chicago och näringslivsfientlig miljöaktivist. Klandrar förre presidenten George W. Bush för att ha “förgiftat vattnet som minoriteter måste dricka”. Davis har ingen tidigare erfarenhet av handhavande av vattentillgångar. Har varit medlem i ACORN.

Van Jones

Green Jobs Czar

Van Jones.

Jones tvingades dessbättre avgå sedan hans utnämning lett till stark kritik. Han är en radikal svart aktivist som varit medlem i the American Communist Party (ACP) samt San Francisco Communist Party (SFCP). Van Jones har väckt uppseende med att skylla terroristattackerna mot USA den 11 september 2001 på president George W. Bush och krävt att Bush ställs inför rätta vid den internationella domstolen för krigsförbrytelser i Haag. Den bisarre Jones har även beskyllt vita för att förgifta svarta. Han vill se en socialistisk omvandling av Förenta staterna.

Daniel Fried

Guantanamo Closure Czar

Daniel Fried.

Mannen som fått det högsta ansvaret för att avveckla fånglägret vid den amerikanska Guantanamo-basen på Kuba är en rättighetsaktivist av den gamla skolan, som bland annat förespråkar rättigheter för terrorister. Han anser att det är USA som bär ansvaret för Kriget mot terrorn.

Nancy-Ann De Parle

Healt Czar

Nancy-Ann De Parle.

 Var under den andra Clinton-administrationen, i egenskap av director för HCFA (Health Care Financing Administration), chef för de federala sjukvårdsprogrammen Medicare och Medicaid. Hon är en övertygad anhängare av hälsovårdsransonering. Gift med Jason De Parle, som är reporter på tidningen The New York Times. De Parle har kinesiskt påbrå.

Vivek Kundra

Information Czar

Vivek Kundra.

Kundra, som är född i Indiens huvudstad New Delhi men växte upp i Tanzania, har makt att kontrollera all information inklusive varumärken, nyhetspublicering och Internet-trafik. Innan han anställdes i Obamas administration var han verksam som Chief Technology Officer (CTO) för District of Colmbia; han utnämndes 2007 av borgmästare Adrian Fenty till denna post.

Todd Stern

International Climate Czar

Todd Stern.

Obamas huvudansvarige för klimatförändring var assisterande stabscef i Vita huset 1993-98 och är en stark anhängare av klimatavtalet i Kyoto. Går in hårt för att driva igenom “cap and trade”, det vill säga ett administrativt styrmedel i syfte att kontrollera miljöutsläpp genom att förse industrier med ekonomiska incentiv för att begränsa utsläpp.

Dennis Blair

Intelligence Czar

Dennis Blair.

Pensionerad amiral som stoppade de amerikanska planerna på missilförsvar med motiveringen, att de var alltför “provokativa”. Ordförande i den starkt vänsterinriktade organisationen Council of Foreign Relations, vilken klandrar amerikanska organisationer för att förorsaka regionala krig. Under sin tid som överbefälhavare för USAs Stilla havs-kommando anklagades han för att under konflikten i Östtimor ha vägrat lyda order från civila tjänstemän i Clinton-administrationen.

George Mitchell

Middeleast Peace Czar

George Mitchell.

Mitchell är en före detta senator från Maine och övertygad vänsterradikal. Han har bland annat fört fram åsikten att Israel borde splittras upp i “två eller tre mindre, mer hanterbara bitar”. Mitchell är vidare motståndare till kärnvapen, anhängare av antivapen-lobbyn samt för homosexuellas rättigheter.

Kenneth Feinberg

Pay Czar

Kenneth Feinberg.

Var tidigare stabschef för framlidne senatorn, den starkt vänsterinriktade Ted Kennedy. Feinberg är en advokat som anses ha berikat sig genom skadeståndsprocesserna till förmån för offren för terrorattacken den 11 september 2001.

Cass Sunstein

Regulatory Czar

Cass Sunstein.

Vänsteraktivistisk domare som anser att det fria ordet bör vara begränsat för “det allmännas bästa”. Har upprepade gånger fällt domar som går emot den personliga friheten, som till exempel rätten att äga vapen. Sunstein har hävdat att djur borde ha rätt att stämma människor inför rätta. I en bok har han kallat familjen en “anakronism”.

John Holdren

Science Czar

John Holdren.

Frågan är om inte John Holdren, med sin deklarerade åsikt att träd borde få stämma människor inför rätta, är den bisarraste av alla Obamas “tsarer”. Han anses faktiskt av en del vara spritt, språngande galen. Hårdför och ideologiskt motiverad miljöaktivist. Som medlem i miljöorganisationen Sierra Club är Holdren övertygad motståndare till det amerikanska näringslivet; han hävdar att näringslivet i samverkan med CIA har förorsakat världsfattigdomen.

Earl Devaney

Stimulus Accountability Czar

Earl Devaney.

Har en karriär bakom sig som gått ut på att ta vapnen ifrån de amerikanska medborgarna. Devaney tror också på öppna gränser mot Mexiko. Författare till ett uttalande som skyllde på knarkkriget i Mexiko på amerikanska vapenbutiker.

J. Scott Gration

Sudan Czar

J. Scott Gration.

Pensionerade generalen Gration har som son till ett kristet missionärspar sitt ursprung i den kommunistiska Demokratiska Republiken Kongo. Anser att USA gör alltför litet i syfte att hjälpa Tredje världens länder. Gration är i likhet med Dennis Blair ledamot i den vänstervridna Council of Foreign Relations och kräver högre skatter för att USA skall kunna ge större bidrag till FN.

Herb Allison

TARP Czar

Herb Allison.

TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) är ett regeringsprogram med uppgift att köpa upp tillgångar och stamaktier av finansinstitutioner med syftet att stärka den amerikanska finanssektorn. Noterbart är att Allison, i sin egenskap av Chief Executive Officer (CEO) vid konkursdrabbade Fannie May, var en av de ansvariga för den amerikanska recessionen genom att använda egendomslån för att stötta den amerikanska aktiemarknaden. Detta ledde till att miljontals amerikaner förlorade sina livs besparingar.

John Brennan

Terrorism Czar

John Brennan.

Den högste ansvarige för terroristbekämpning har, trots sin bakgrund i CIA, gjort sig känd som en medveten anti-CIA-aktivist. Brennan saknar utbildning i diplomati och utrikes relationer. Han tror på öppna gränser till Mexiko och på att förhandla med terrorister samt har uppmanat president Obama att upplösa den amerikanska militären.

Aneesh Chopra

Technology Czar

Aneesh Chopra.

Saknar teknologisk träning eller utbildning. Arbetade tidigare för the Advisory Board Company, en tankesmedja med inriktning på hälsovård och sjukhus. Känd som en läkarfientlig aktivist. Ivrig anhängare av Obamas plan för en ransonerad sjukvård. Chopra menar att avlönade läkare skall arbeta uteslutande för regeringens sjukvårdsplan, vilken av allt att döma kommer att i grunden förstöra den amerikanska ekonomin.

Adolfo Carrion, Jr.

Urban Affairs Czar

Adolfo Carrion, Jr.

Carrion har puertoricansk bakgrund och är en rutinerad antiamerikansk aktivist och medlem av vänstergrupper i Latinamerika. Är numera en förmögen “slum lord” som blivit förmögen på fastighetsaffärer i Bronx, New York. Han är ägare till ett antal lyxiga bostäder och andelslägenheter, vilka emanerar ur “sweetheart deals” med fackföreningar. Carrion vill ha högre skatter för att regeringen skall ha råd att betala för bostadsprojekt för minoriteter och hälsovård.

Ashton Carter

Weapons Czar

Ashton Carter.

En vänstersympatisör som vill att alla privatägda vapen skall förstöras. Carter är en varm anhängare av FNs förslag att förbjuda privat ägande av vapen i USA.

Gary Samore

WMD Czar

Gary Samore.

En tidigare kommunist som vill att Förenta staterna ensidigt skall förstöra alla sina WMD (Weapons of Mass-destruction, massförstörelsevapen) som en good-will-gest gentemot den övriga världen.

Kevin Jennings

Safe Schools Czar

Kevin Jennings.

Ännu en av Obamas “höjdartsarer”. När han som lärare av en 15-årig elev fick höra att eleven umgicks sexuellt med en äldre man, frågade Jennings: “Hur går det?” Jennings föreslog inte att eleven skulle anmäla den äldre sexbrottslingen, utan menade att man borde använda kondom. Jennings var redan som 18-åring involverad i  homosexfrågor och är författare till företalet till boken Queery Elementary Education. Han har grundat och varit VD för Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). Kevin Jennings har flera gånger prisat, och sagt sig vara inspirerad av, Harry Hay; Hay var en tidig anhängare av NAMBLA (North American  Man Boy Love Association).

Jag skulle vilja uppmana alla som fnyser åt anklagelser om att Obama är socialist att studera denna lista. Maken till samling av politiskt korrekta samhällsdestruktörer och vänstervridna flummartyper, av vilka några uppenbarligen är helt perverterade, torde man få leta länge efter!

Harry Reid is pushing the public option by arguing that states that do not wish to have the option can opt out of the plan as long as they write legislation to do so within a year.  This is a fairly interesting move; but the beauty in the plan stems not from some policy calculation, but from a presumption that psychological and behavioral biases will kick in making the public option the status quo policy and–more likely than not–the incumbent status quo policy.

The basic idea is that within a year, a status quo bias –it is what it sounds like–will develop for most legislators if some acceptably beneficial–electable–policy outcomes begin to creep in.  In such a situation risk aversion and, more importantly loss aversion would compel legislators to not seek redress of the public option through new legislation.

To get the gist of the argument, see this piece in Psychology Today on ways to increase individuals savings in individual 401(k) accounts.  Unless fallacy of composition were at work–one cannot infer that X is true at the collective level from the fact that it is true at the individual level– the argument for the opt-out would apply in a similar way.

Note that if the status quo bias does not work, and states do opt out successfully we are in grave danger of having policy outcomes that differ widely, across states with respect to public health care.

Find a summary of Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler’s book Nudge

A more theoretical and scholarly piece by Sunstein and Thaler that has some obvious policy prescriptions can be downloaded here.

Those who have JSTOR accounts might do well to download this more scholarly article: Kahneman, D, Jack Knetch and Richard Thaler. (1991) Endowment Effect,  Loss Aversion and Status Quo Bias.  Journal of Economic Perspectives. Vol 5. No.1.

Here is yet more evidence that you are a reflection of the company you keep.  In this case there isn’t much of a reflection since floating excrement in a cesspool doesn’t reflect very well.

Here’s more insight into the long laundry list of thugs, murderers, socialist, and communists with whom our pretender to presidency CHOOSES to associate.

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http://www.personalliberty.com/conservative-politics/7949/

If You Are Known by the Company You Keep, What do Obama’s Associates Say About Him?

In the Aesop’s Fable, The Ass and His Purchaser, a man looking to buy a donkey wanted to test the animal before completing the purchase. So he put the donkey in his field with the other donkeys to see what would happen.

The donkey immediately strayed from the majority of the herd and cozied up to the laziest donkey of all.

Seeing that, the man led the donkey back to his owner. When the owner asked how he could judge the donkey’s character so quickly the man explained, “I didn’t even need to see how he worked. I knew he would be just like the one he chose to be his friend.”

A person is known by the company he keeps.

Fables are popular because they tell the story of the way things in life really work. In business, when someone takes over a department or company, that person promotes those he or she likes to positions of authority. The new manager seeks out those who have a philosophy, work ethic and disposition similar to his.

One would expect a president to do the same thing. After all, a president is elected—supposedly—based on the vision, ideas and proposals he championed during the campaign. It would then make sense that he would put in place those who supported his vision and would therefore be enthusiastic in working to achieve it.

So who are President Barack Obama’s friends, and who has he put in charge of the effort to enact his policies? And what do the friends he has chosen and the people he has put in position of authority in his administration say about him?

Following, in alphabetical order, is a list of some of Obama’s friends, advisors and people charged with enacting his policies:

• William Ayers—Now a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Ayers spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the domestic terrorist organization known as the Weather Underground. In the early 1970s the Weather Underground was responsible for bombing the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., and setting a bomb that didn’t go off at a military induction center in Oakland, Calif. The group also murdered two policemen and a Brink’s truck driver in a botched armored car robbery, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) website. Ayers surrendered to face charges in the 1980s, but the charges were dropped because of improper surveillance. Coincidentally, on Sept. 11, 2001, Ayers was being interviewed about a book he had written and he told the interviewer he didn’t think the Weather Underground had done enough. Ayers and Obama first crossed paths in Chicago in the 1990s and served together on the board of the not-for-profit Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a boondoggle to spend tens of millions of dollars for their pet “education” projects. Obama downplayed his friendship with Ayers as casual, but evidence indicates their relationship was much more. Many now believe that Ayers penned Obama’s “autobiography” Dreams from My Father.

• Carol Browner—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, Browner is an avowed socialist. She served as one of 14 leaders of Socialist International’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for global governance and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change, according to an article in The Washington Times. The group supports socialism and has been harshly critical of U.S. policies. She is also a supporter of smart growth policies, as we have described previously. Browner also served on the board of Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection, though her name was scrubbed from the site after Obama tapped her for the director’s position. Not surprisingly, Obama’s transition team told The Times Browner’s membership in a socialist organization was not a problem.

• Frank Marshall Davis—You won’t find Davis’ name on an organizational chart of White House staff, but he was instrumental in forming the political philosophy of Barack Hussein Obama. Called “Uncle Frank” in Dreams from My Father, Davis was a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), according to a 1951 report of the Commission on Subversive Activities to the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii. Obama has admitted to spending time with Uncle Frank—who he cryptically describes as being a person of some modest notoriety at one time—and listening to his poetry and getting career path advice. Davis may also have been a pedophile. Writing under the pseudonym Bob Greene, Davis wrote a debased pornographic novel entitled, Sex Rebel: Black (Memiors of a Gash Gourmet), in which he describes group sex encounters and sex he and his wife had with a 13-year-old girl named Anne. Davis died in 1987.

• Anita Dunn—As White House Communications advisor, Dunn has been seen a lot lately as the face of the Obama administration’s strategy to try and discredit Fox News. She is described on Politico.com as a veteran Democratic strategist and top advisor on Obama’s presidential campaign. As the war between the Obama White House (see more under Rham Emmanual) and Fox has escalated, videotape has surfaced showing Dunn gloating over how the campaign “controlled” the media. Another videotape surfaced showing Dunn speaking at a June high school graduation ceremony where she praised Marxist/Communist Chinese Premiere Mao Zedong as one of her favorite philosophers and one of the two people she turns to most. It’s difficult to understand how Mao had time to philosophize as he was busy killing somewhere between 50 million and 70 million of his country’s citizens during his 27-year reign of terror.

• Ezekiel Emanuel—The president’s Special Advisor for Health Policy, Ezekiel is brother to White House Chief of Staff Rham Emanuel. Ezekiel is the source of Sarah Palin’s death panel idea. This Emanuel has written that he believes many healthcare treatments should be denied to those under 15 and over 65 to save money, the rationale being that only people between 15 and 65 are beneficial to society.

• Rahm Emanuel—Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel is a thug Chicago politician who once sent a two-and-a-half foot long, dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest to express his displeasure. He’s known for his full-time use of gutter language and once told then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just before an appearance with Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal: “This is important. Don’t f**k it up.” He also coined the phrase, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” He’s also behind the ridiculous policy of starting a fight with television news agency Fox News.

• Chai Feldblum—Nominated by the president to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Feldblum signed a radical 2006 manifesto which endorsed polygamous households and argued traditional marriage should not be privileged “above all others,” according to a report in Catholic News Agency. According to a statement from the White House, Feldblum has worked on advancing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights…” She is co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at a UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change the American workplace and revolutionize social mores, according to a report on the WorldnetDaily website.

• Patrick Gaspard—White House Political Director, Gaspard was formerly a lobbyist for Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the organization that sent its thugs out to disrupt Tea Party protests and stir up trouble at town hall meetings in August. Prior to that, Gaspard worked as national field director for American Coming Together (ACT), a sub-group of the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). ACT was fined $775,000 in civil penalties by the federal government for various voter fraud offenses. You can read more about ACORN here.

• Eric Holder—The Attorney General of the United States is an anti-gun racist who earlier this year referred to the United States as “a nation of cowards” on race relations. He also has an interesting take on justice. He worked to convince President Clinton to pardon billionaire fugitive Mark Rich (convicted of fraud and racketeering), Weather Underground (where have we heard of that organization before?) terrorists Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans, and he declined to prosecute New Black Panther brutes who stood over a Pennsylvania polling station with baseball bats intimidating voters. Oh yes, he also wants to bring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the United States.

• John Holdren—Obama’s Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is not only an abortion supporter, he is an abortion nut who believes that compulsory abortions could be sustained under the existing U.S. Constitution if a population crisis arose. He also supports mass sterilization of the U.S. population through lacing the country’s water supply with drugs. Holdren authored with two other people a book called Ecoscience promoting their loony ideas about population control and One World Government—or what they called a Planetary Regime—to regulate international trade, the food supply and determine the optimum population for the world.

• Valerie Jarrett—The New York Times called Jarrett, Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, the ultimate Obama insider. She has also been called the other half of Obama’s brain. She’s another one of those Chicago thug politicians who has gamed the system—including operating as a slum lord—for her own benefit. Her company, Habitat, Inc., managed the Grove Parc housing complex which was located in the district represented by State Senator Obama. As state senator, Obama coauthored a bill to give tax credits for developers which Jarrett used on the complex. As U.S. senator, Obama pressed for increased federal subsidies for like projects. Despite receiving government funds and tax credits, Grove Parc was ordered demolished because of its deplorable condition. She also served the administrations of Chicago mayors Harold Washington and Richard Daly, both scandal-plagued. Washington, by the way, was backed in his bid for mayor by Chicago’s Communist Party and the local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America. Called by the Washington Post a tutor to Obama and his wife Michelle, Jarrett is the step-daughter of Chicago journalist Vernon Jarrett. Vernon Jarrett was an associate of Frank Marshal Davis, Obama’s mentor, when Davis lived in Chicago prior to moving to Hawaii.

• Kevin Jennings—This former school teacher and long-time gay rights activist was named Obama’s Safe Schools Czar. He has accused Baptists, the Boy Scouts and sports fans of anti-gay bias, and advocates a special high school for gay teens and gay-straight alliance clubs for every high school in America, according to a report in CNSNews.com. He believes that kindergartners should be taught to respect all sexual orientations while insisting that “ex-gay messages” and “Christian values” are misused to isolate or denigrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and have no place in the nation’s public schools, CNSNews.com reported. Oh yeah, he also supports pedophilia. While Jennings was a teacher, a minor student told Jennings that he was having gay sex with an adult. Jennings covered it up. He also has praised Harry Hay, a defender of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.

• Van Jones—Once Obama’s White House Environmental Advisor, Jones was fired in the dead of night on a holiday weekend after a video surfaced in which he called Republicans a bodily orifice, and after a controversial document he signed was revealed. That document accused former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of either planning or knowing about ahead of time the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. In addition to being a 9/11 Truther, Jones is an avowed Communist. He was appointed to his position by Valerie Jarrett, who has been seen on video praising Jones and saying she and Obama had been watching Jones for a long time.

• Mark Lloyd—FCC Diversity Czar, is also known as the man who wants to stifle free speech in America like Hugo Chavez does in Venezuela. He has been videotaped saying the Chavez revolution in Venezuela was almost lost because of the privately-owned media. Chavez, of course, is the Marxist dictator of Venezuela, personal friend to Communist dictator Fidel Castro of Cuba and Islamic terrorist dictator Mahmoud Ahmadenijad of Iran. In 2006, while at the liberal Center for American Progress, Lloyd wrote a book entitled, Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America. In it he presents the idea that all private broadcasters should be charged licensing fees at a rate equal to their operating expenses and that money should go to the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). In a 2007 report entitled The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio, Lloyd complains about the fact that people want to listen to Christian and conservative talk radio rather than liberal radio, and lists ways the Federal government can fix the “problem.” His solution would include caps on the number of local stations a corporation can own, ensure greater local accountability on radio licensing and require owners who fail to fulfill their obligations to pay a fee to support PBS.

• Cecelia Munoz—Now White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, Munoz was previously Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza, the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in the country, which has called national anti-immigration groups “hate groups.” La Raza, which literally translates The Race, funds extremist groups and supports illegal immigration as a way of obtaining political power. The group advocates taking the Southwest U.S. for the purpose of creating a new Hispanic state.

• Cass Sunstein—Recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor and dingbat who has—in writings and speeches—called for a ban on all hunting and claims that animals should be represented by lawyers in animal abuse cases. He is a socialist who has advocated for gun control and heavy regulation of the Internet. He also wrote in his 2008 book, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness, that he believes people’s organs can be harvested without their consent. Sunstein would like to see personal email communications regulated by the government and believes the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing.

• Rev. Jeremiah Wright—Obama sat in Wright’s church for 20 years yet claims to have never heard any of the hate-filled racism that crossed his lips. Wright’s anti-Semitic, anti-American sermons came to light during the campaign. Among his claims: the U.S. government was responsible for infecting blacks with the virus that causes AIDS, America was responsible for the 9/11 attacks—“the chickens have come home to roost”—and Jews are responsible for ethnic cleansing in Gaza and are pressuring Obama associates to keep Wright and Obama separated.

These are just a few of the folks who have occupied or currently occupy Obama’s inner circle. He was passed off by the mainstream media as being a centrist and moderate, but many of friends are anything but that, and some are quite radical. And when you parse some of his words or find video or audio from several years ago you know that Obama himself has some radical views.

But the media ignored Obama’s ties to radicals and communists. That, and Obama’s soaring rhetoric led many otherwise thoughtful and good people down the primrose path, and they voted for him without realizing what they were getting.

But as the truth gets out about his associates, the cover is coming off. He’s becoming known by the company he keeps, as well as his own deeds.

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“Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure freedom.”

“I am certain nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after the mirage of social justice. “

~Friedrich A. Hayek

General George Washington

Glenn Beck-10-29-09-A

Glenn Beck-10-29-09-B

Glenn Beck-10-29-09-C

Glenn Beck-10-29-09-D

Glenn Beck-10-29-09-E

The Ascent of Man – 8: The Drive for Power 1/5

The Ascent of Man – 8: The Drive for Power 2/5

The Ascent of Man – 8: The Drive for Power 3/5

The Ascent of Man – 8: The Drive for Power 4/5

The Ascent of Man – 8: The Drive for Power 5/5

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. “

~Thomas Jefferson

George Washington takes the Oath of Office (Inauguration)

Background Articles and Videos

Charles Freaking Krauthammer OBLITERATES Barack Obama’s War on FOX News — WOW!!!

FOX News Panel — Barack Obama’s War On FOX News Rebuffed by Courageous Press

Progressivism

“…Progressivism is a political and social term for ideologies and movements favoring or advocating changes or reform, usually in an egalitarian direction for economic policies (public management) and liberal direction for social policies (personal choice). Progressivism is often viewed in opposition to conservative ideologies.

In the United States, the term progressivism emerged in the late 19th century into the 20th century in reference to a more general response to the vast changes brought by industrialization: an alternative to both the traditional conservative response to social and economic issues and to the various more radical streams of socialism and anarchism which opposed them. Political parties, such as the Progressive Party, organized at the start of the 20th century, and progressivism made great strides under American presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Baines Johnson.[1]

Despite being associated with left-wing politics, the term “progressive” has also been used by groups not particularly left-wing. The Progressive Democrats in the Republic of Ireland took the name “progressivism” despite being considered centre-right, or classical liberal. The European Progressive Democrats was a mainly heterogeneous political group in the European Union. For most of the period from 1942-2003, the largest conservative party in Canada was the Progressive Conservative Party.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism

Progressive Era

“…The Progressive Era in the United States was a period of reform which lasted from the 1890s to the 1920s.^[1]

Responding to the changes brought about by industrialization, ^[2] the Progressives advocated a wide range of economic, political, social, and moral reforms.^[3] Initially the movement was successful at local levels, and then it progressed to state and gradually national. Both the reformers and their opponents were predominantly members of the middle class.

In the Gilded Age (late 19th century) the parties were reluctant to involve the federal government too heavily in the private sector, except in the area of railroads and tariffs. In general, they accepted the concept of laissez-faire, a doctrine opposing government interference in the economy except to maintain law and order. This attitude started to change during the depression of the 1890s when small business, farm, and labor movements began asking the government to intercede on their behalf.^[8]

By the turn of the century, a middle class had developed that was leery of both the business elite and the radical political movements of farmers and laborers in the Midwest and West. Known as Progressives, these people favored government regulation of business practices to, in their minds, ensure competition and free enterprise. Congress enacted a law regulating railroads in 1887 (the Interstate Commerce Act), and one preventing large firms from controlling a single industry in 1890 (the Sherman Antitrust Act). These laws were not rigorously enforced, however, until the years between 1900 and 1920, when Republican President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), Democratic President Woodrow Wilson (1913–1921), and others sympathetic to the views of the Progressives came to power. Many of today’s U.S. regulatory agencies were created during these years, including the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Muckrakers were journalists who encouraged readers to demand more regulation of business. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) showed America the horrors of the Chicago Union Stock Yards, a giant complex of meat processing that developed in the 1870s. The federal government responded to Sinclair’s book with the new regulatory Food and Drug Administration. Ida M. Tarbell wrote a series of articles against the Standard Oil monopoly. This affected both the government and the public reformers. The series helped pave the way for the breakup of the monopoly.^[9]

When Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected President with a Democratic Congress in 1912 he implemented a series of progressive policies. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, and the income tax was instituted in the United States. Wilson resolved the longstanding debates over tariffs and antitrust, and created the Federal Reserve, a complex business-government partnership that to this day dominates the financial world.

In 1913, Henry Ford, adopted the moving assembly line, with each worker doing one simple task in the production of automobiles. Taking his cue from developments during the progressive era, Ford offered a very generous wage—$5 a day—to his workers, arguing that a mass production enterprise could not survive if average workers could not buy the goods. However, the wage increase did not extend to women, and Ford expanded the company’s Sociological Department to monitor his workers and ensure that they did not spend their new found bounty on “vice and cheap thrills.”^[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Era

Obama: We are 5 days from FUNDAMENTALly transforming America

Mark Lloyd on the Future of Media from 2005

FCC Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd discussing plans to shut down conservative media

Obama’s Czar Mark Lloyd’s FCC ‘Diversity’ Chief – His Take on Free Speech

The Power of Progress – John Podesta – HIGHLIGHTS

Lawrence Summers on Economic Crisis & Conservative Ideology

Support for OBAMA is PERSONAL

Obama Youth? Socialism? Truth Squad?

Buffy Wicks Introduces USAservice.org

glenn beck NEA links to Valerie Jarrett or whitehouse

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda 1/4

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda 2/4

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda 3/4

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda 4/4

Related Posts On Pronk Palisades

Cass Sunstein–Regulatory Czar–Animal Rights Activist, Body Part Taker, Gun Grabber, Internet Regulator, Nudger–Nuts!

Mark Lloyd, FCC Diversity Czar, and Cass Sustein, Regulatory Czar: Progressive Radical Socialist Silencing of Free Speech On Internet Blogs and Talk Radio

Network Neurtrality–FCC Julius Genachowski–Tim Wu–Free and Open Internet Or Slow and Stupid Internet?

Robert W. McChesney–Videos

Tim Wu–Videos

President Obama Lies Again On Sunday Shows–Breaks No New Tax Promise–Compulsory Health Insurance Is A Tax Increase–Cut The Weasel Words Mr. President!

Obama’s Mao Mao Mopsters Red Bucket Brigade aka Red Guards Spreading the Wealth Around

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Obama’s Progressive Radical Socialist Democratic Party’s Propaganda War On Freedom of Speech

Anita Dunn–White House Communications Director–Exposed By Beck As Mao Tse-Tung Admirer On Video!

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Fox News Scares Narcissist Obama–Mirror Mirror Mirror On The Wall Who Is The Fairest Of Them All–Sarah Palin–Obama Attacks Mirror!

Sam Vaknin–Videos

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)–Videos

Barack Obama Cult?

Jim Jones–Cult of Personality–The Tragedy of Jonestown–Videos

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The Obama Depression Continues–Official Unemployment Hits Rate 9.8% (15,142,000 Seek Full Time Job) and Real Unemployment Rate Hits 17.0% (26,181,000 Seek Full Time Job)!

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Hype: The Obama Effect–Videos

Crime–Corruption–Organized Crime–ACORN–Taxes–Obama Connected And Trained

The Arrogance of President Obama: Hectoring Habitual Liar

Broom Budget Busting Bums: Replace The Entire Congress–Tea Party Express and Patriots–United We Stand!

Obama’s Civilian National Security Force–Youth Corp Wave–Friendly Fascism Faces–Cons–Crooks–Communists–Communities–Corps!

Obama’s Hidden Agenda and Covert Cadre of Marxists, Communists, Progressives, Radicals, Socialists–Far Left Democrats Destroying Capitalism and The American Republic

Apollo Alliance and Obama’s Green Czar Van Jones: Greens on The Outside–Reds On The Inside–Big Greens, Big Unions, Big Foundations, Big Business, Big Bucks, Big Taxes–Videos

Public Option = Government Option = Pathway to Single Payer = Single Payer = Socialized Medicine = Blue Pill = Poison Pill

Change You Can Count On: The 2,000,000,000 Health Care Plan Requires Massive Tax Increases and Huge Cuts In Medicare Reimbursement for Doctors and Hospitals!

Beck and Hannity Expose Corrupt Ethics Waived Slumlord Valerie Jarrett–Senior Advisor, Olympics Czar and Close Friend of President Barack Obama–Videos

The Battle For The World Economy–Videos

President Obama–Killer of The American Dream and Market Capitalism–Stop The Radical Socialists Before They Kill You!

Cloward Piven Strategy–The Crisis Strategy Of Barack Obama

Yuri Bezmenov On KGB Soviet Propaganda and Subversion–Videos 

President Barack Obama Puppet of Trilateral Commission?–Videos

G. William Domhoff: Who Runs America–Videos

Eugenics–Rockefeller–United Nations–Population Control–Holdren–Abortions/Sterilization–Browner–Cap and Trade–Obama–Compulsory Socialized Medicine–Euthanasia–Transhuman–Brave New World!–Videos 

Eugenics, Planned Parenthood, Population Control, and Designer Babies–Videos

Barrack Obama’s Kansas Values–Killing Babies in Cold Blood?

Black Genocide–Eugenics–Planned Parenthood–Population Control–Videos

George Soros: Barack Obama’s Money Man and Agenda Puppeter

George Soros: Government Interventionist and Global Socialist–Obama’s Puppeter Master–Videos

Soros Funded and Obama’s Manufactured Hate Generator–The Southern Poverty Law Center–Disinformation Propaganda Campaign 

Change You Can Count On: The $2,000,000,000 Health Care Plan Requires Massive Tax Increases and Huge Cuts In Medicare Reimbursement for Doctors and Hospitals!

Second Opinion: Doctors Speak Up On Proposed Health Care Reform–And A Third Texas Opinion!–Videos

Republican Health Care Reform: The Patients’ Choice Act

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The Senate Doctors Show–Videos

Obama’s Waterloo– Government Compulsory Single Payer Socialized Medicine!–Videos

President Obama’s Plan of Massive Deficit Spending Is Destroying The US Economy–The American People Say Stop Socialism BS Now!

The Bum’s Rush of The American People: The Totally Irresponsible Democratic Party Health Care Bill and Obama’s Big Lie Exposed

Chairman Obama’s Progressive Radical Socialist Health Care Bill Kills Individual Private Health Care Insurance–Join The Second American Revolution!

The Obama Big Lie and Inconvenient Truth About Health Care–The Public Option Trojan Horse–Leads To A Single Payor Goverment Monopoly of Health Care and The Bankruptcy of USA!

The Obama Public Option Poison Pill For A Government Health Care Monopoly–Single Payer System–Betting Your Life and Paying Though The Nose

Government Bureaucracy: Organizational Chart of The House Democrats’ Health Plan

Dr. Robert W. Christensen–Videos

John Stossel–Sick In America–Videos

Down and Dirty Democrat Clinton vs. Up and Clean Democrat Obama: Hard Ball Time!

Just recently the president posted a blog on his website discussing his plans for sexuality in America. He also shares what “changes” he is already orchestrating in government programs. Thanks to his urging, we now have money at the HHS divided by sexuality:

On the same day, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced a plan to establish the nation’s first ever national resource center to assist communities across the country in their efforts to provide services and support for older LGBT Americans.

From that link:

Experts estimate that as many as 1.5 to 4 million LGBT individuals are age 60 and older.   Agencies that provide services to older individuals may be unfamiliar or uncomfortable with the needs of this group of individuals. The new Resource Center for LGBT Elders will provide information, assistance and resources for both LGBT organizations and mainstream aging services providers at the state and community level to assist them in the development and provision of culturally sensitive supports and services. The LGBT Center will also be available to educate the LGBT community about the importance of planning ahead for future long term care needs.

And just a few weeks ago, the Administration on Aging at HHS issued its first ever grant to an LGBT Aging Services Program through its Community Innovations for Aging in Place initiative to the LA Gay and Lesbian Community Center.

Culturally sensitive?! These programs will likely provide the same services just with different sexually slanted language. Questions about the constitutionality of federal involvement not-withstanding, health and aging services shouldn’t need to differ because of sexuality, nor is this a prudent use of tax payers money. this administration continues to divide and expand government outlays of money for no real value. Further WHY would the government need to know who a person sleeps with to provide retirement services? These expansions provide yet another government intrusion on privacy. Why do only the LGBT “community need to learn “the importance of planning ahead for future long term care needs.” Is this arguably not a generic concern, regardless of who one sleeps with?

Further, isn’t the donation of tax payer’s money to a sexuality based organization discrimination? Wouldn’t such a climate be “hostile” or “discomforting” to a person of hetero preferences? Isn’t it discriminatory? Oh wait, that would only be if it were a grant to a Heterosexual Aging Services Program. the hypocrisy is disgusting.

The president concludes his blog with this ominous tidbit:

Every day so many of us working in the Obama Administration ask:  How can we ensure that our time here makes the lives of LGBT Americans living across this country safer, fairer, and a little better?  We know how much work is ahead of us.  Some items will take longer than others.  But the shift since January is clear, and progress at every level will continue.

Day by day, law by law, mind by changing mind.  That is the promise we are fulfilling.

Safety: laws already provide for protection from violent crimes and agression. Fair: *NOONE* has to talk about their sex life at work. Better? presumably by forcibly changing the vestigial remnants of societal mores in this country to see homosexuality as not only acceptable or “tolerable,” but as something beautiful, to be celebrated, which Obama did in his declaration of  gay pride month this year. With the evil men and agenda surrounding Obama, who can say he is a “devout Christian?” Who can say he loves this country when nearly every word and action he takes weakens or damages the United States.

It is very possible that before this man leaves office (which I hope happens in a fair and open election, as historically the transfer of power has happened in this nation) blogs and articles expressing the beliefs and opinions I have here will be illegal.

Obama is fulfilling one promise he made: To fundamentally change this country. That is the promise he is fulfilling. Day by day, brick by brick, he is transforming this country from one with a free press, free market and free people into a totalitarian state with a muzzled press, a communist market, and an enslaved people. And it is being done to accolades and applause. God save our republic.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!
(Isaiah 5:20-21)

Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.
(Proverbs 14:34)

Disclaimer: Opposition to a lifestyle, action or political/social cause (LAoPSC) does not mean hatred of those who engage in aforementioned disapproved LAoPSC. Believing that 2 wrongs do not make a right; I hereby denounce, discourage and reject any and all violence perpetuated, committed or plotted by any individual, group, organization or entity against those who support LAoPSC.

]]> http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/czar-wars-klein-sunstein-marriage-discriminates-against-singles-matrimony-does-not-do-justice-to-what-people-might-choose/ Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:15:40 +0000 Brenda J. Elliott http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/czar-wars-klein-sunstein-marriage-discriminates-against-singles-matrimony-does-not-do-justice-to-what-people-might-choose/ http://stayinghomebakingcookies.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/cass-sunstein/ Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:26:16 +0000 redfinch http://stayinghomebakingcookies.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/cass-sunstein/

This man is off his rocker.  And he is one of our presidents closest advisors!!

I guess anything to erode marriage and bash religion is ok.  I happen to not agree with Sunstein at all.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=113802

CZAR WARS

Sunstein urges: Abolish marriage

Adviser compares institution to country club membership

By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Cass Sunstein

The U.S. government should abolish its sanctioning of marriage, argued Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s regulatory czar.

Sunstein proposed that the concept of marriage should become privatized, with the state only granting civil union contracts to couples wishing to enter into an agreement.

Sunstein explained marriage licensing is unnecessary, pointing out people stay committed to organizations like country clubs and homeowner associations without any government interference.

“Under our proposal, the word marriage would no longer appear in any laws, and marriage licenses would no longer be offered or recognized by any level of government,” wrote Sunstein and co-author Richard Thaler in their 2008 book, “Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth and happiness.”

In the book – obtained and reviewed by WND – Sunstein explains his approach would ensure that “the only legal status states would confer on couples would be a civil union, which would be a domestic partnership agreement between any two people.”

He proposed marriage not be recognized by the government. Marriages would instead be “strictly private matters, performed by religious and other private organizations,” he wrote.

“Governments would not be asked to endorse any particular relationships by conferring on them the term marriage,” added Sunstein.

Sunstein slammed current government recognition of marriage as “an official license scheme.”

“When the state grants marriage it gives both maternal and symbolic benefits to the couples it recognizes. But why combine the two functions? And what is added by the term marriage?” he asked.

Sunstein explained terminating the issuance of state marriage contracts would not affect the commitments of those in the “partnership.”

“People take their private commitments serious,” Sunstein wrote. “Members of religious organizations, homeowners’ associations, and country clubs all feel bound, sometimes quite strongly, by the structures and rules of such organizations.”

Take organs from ‘helpless patients’

Sunstein’s proposal regarding marriage is hardly the only controversial section of his book. WND reported last week that in the same book, Sunstein defended the possibility of removing organs from terminally ill patients without their permission.

He also strongly pushed for the removal of organs from deceased individuals who did not explicitly consent to becoming organ donors.

Sunstein and Thaler discussed multiple legal scenarios regarding organ donation. One possibility presented in the book, termed by Sunstein as “routine removal,” posits that “the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions, and it can remove their organs without asking anyone’s permission.”

“Though it may sound grotesque, routine removal is not impossible to defend,” wrote Sunstein. “In theory, it would save lives, and it would do so without intruding on anyone who has any prospect for life.”

Sunstein continued: “Although this approach is not used comprehensively by any state, many states do use the rule for corneas (which can be transplanted to give some blind patients sight). In some states, medical examiners performing autopsies are permitted to remove corneas without asking anyone’s permission.”

Sunstein’s example of medical examiners removing corneas, however, applies only to patients who are already declared deceased.

After defending the position, Sunstein conceded the “routine removal” approach “violates a generally accepted principle, which is that within broad limits, individuals should be able to decide what is to be done with and to their bodies.”

Still, Sunstein did not add that the removal of organs from a living individual should be banned.

Also in the same book, CNSNews.com previously noted Sunstein argued for removing organs from deceased patients who are not registered as organ donors, a policy not without precedent. Spain and some European Union countries have been debating accepting a law of implied consent.

Writes Sunstein: “A policy that can pass libertarian muster by our standards is called presumed consent.”

“Presumed consent preserves freedom of choice, but it is different from explicit consent because it shifts the default rule,” he writes. “Under this policy, all citizens would be presumed to be consenting donors, but they would have the opportunity to register their unwillingness to donate, and they could do so easily. We want to underline the word easily, because the harder it is to register your unwillingness to participate, the less libertarian the policy becomes.”

Sunstein continues: “Although presumed consent is an extremely effective way to increase the supply of organs available for transplant, it may not be an easy sell politically. Some will object to the idea of ‘presuming’ anything when it comes to such a sensitive matter. We are not sure that these objections are convincing, but this is surely a domain in which forced choosing, or what is referred to in this domain as mandated choice, has considerable appeal.”

Sunstein advocates making it mandatory for all citizens to register either as an organ donor or as unwilling to donate their organs.

“Mandated choice could be implemented through a simple addition to the driver’s license registration scheme used in many states. With mandated choice, renewal of your driver’s license would be accompanied by a requirement that you check a box stating your organ donation preferences. Your application would not be accepted unless you had checked one of the boxes. The options might include ‘yes, willing to donate’ and ‘no, unwilling to donate.’”

Government must fund abortion

Sunstein is not shy about his view concerning rights to life or abortion.

WND reported that in his 1993 book “The Partial Constitution” Sunstein argued the government should be required to fund abortion in cases such as rape or incest.

“I have argued that the Constitution … forbids government from refusing to pay the expenses of abortion in cases of rape or incest, at least if government pays for childbirth in such cases,” Sunstein wrote.

The Obama czar asserts that funding only childbirth but not abortion “has the precise consequence of turning women into involuntary incubators.”

Sunstein argues that refusing to fund abortion “would require poor women to be breeders,” while co-opting women’s bodies “in the service of third parties” – referring to fetuses.

Sunstein wrote he has no problem with forcing taxpayers to fund abortions even if they morally object to their money being used for such a purpose.

He wrote: “There would be no tension with the establishment clause if people with religious or other objections were forced to pay for that procedure (abortion). Indeed, taxpayers are often forced to pay for things – national defense, welfare, certain forms of art, and others – to which they have powerful moral and even religious objections.”